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Rockwell Automations ARC furnace control technology earns GBP500,000 each year for Tata Steel.

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Inspec Solutions was asked by Tata Steel (formerly Corus Steel)based in Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK to upgrade the control infrastructure ...

Inspec Solutions was asked by Tata Steel (formerly Corus Steel)based in Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK to upgrade the control infrastructure on three of its electric ladle arc furnaces. One of the options open to Inspec was to use proprietary off-the-shelf furnace-control systems developed by major automation firms in the marketplace. The 300-ton ladle arc furnaces are filled with steel and trimming materials and are heated using three large (600 x 3,000mm) carbon electrodes that are lowered to the steel furnace. It is the control of the electrode movement that has to be precise to maintain the correct arc length and hence the amount of heat going into the ladle. Rockwell Automations ControlLogix-based electrode regulator solutions were just right and offered many other advantages, including giving Tata Steel engineers the ability to service the control units in house while offering all the benefits of a seamless interface to the overall furnace RSView SCADA systems. One of the major challenges at hand were that each of these 3 furnaces had an analogue, digital and windows NT based regulator. Rockwell Process Automation System (Logix and FactoryTalk® products) were an ideal solution for the engineers at Tata Steel. Inspec Solutions quoted "We created the control infrastructure, feeding details to the regulators using I/O and then our Swedish partners provided the control philosophy for each of the furnaces. The arc furnace control philosophy is based on complex algorithmic principles to model the system, replicated in RSLogix™ 5000." Rockwell Automation based solutions not only helped Tata Steel steadily upgrade its whole automation scheme but also brought in huge revenue savings in excess of GBP500K/year.